Chapter 14
EVERETT
T his may...actually work. I’ll admit, it was a bit of an insane idea, even for me. But it seemed to be working. It seemed to be working very well, actually.
After Jahnvi’s family left after dinner last night, I snuck into the public library.
I did it by lying to the guard that I’d been sent to fix their heater.
I used their printers to print about fifty coupons for EJ’s and handed them out to everyone I knew at school.
The coupons were made to end in two days and were only for dinners.
I also had put on my best smile and persuaded everyone that I had the best food in town. But that wasn’t a lie.
Now, I usually don’t like coupons. It’s like handing out free money and I’d rather people showed up to my restaurant for a good meal instead of a cheap meal.
But today I was desperate.
I didn’t want that wedding catering order to walk into an empty restaurant. People seem to take weddings very seriously, and even if the food was good, an empty restaurant might make a negative impression on the bride and groom. But I guess I didn’t need to worry.
My restaurant was packed.
I actually hadn’t seen it that packed since, well, it was under my parents’ control. And that was a long time ago.
The only problem? We weren’t used to that many people. Even on the weekends, the max we ever got was about five or six groups at a time. That allowed me to be the only person working the floor with three cooks in the kitchen. I actually fired everyone else a year ago when I realized this.
But now with a full house and with every booth filled and people waiting by the entrance and reservations piling in, it was too much for just me and the three cooks to manage.
Gripping my tray, I closed my eyes and exhaled sharply.
It’s going to be over soon.
“Welcome to EJ’s; what can I get started for you today?
” By the time I took someone’s order, three other groups had walked in.
I ran over to them and let them know that it was going to be about a one-to-two-hour wait without a reservation.
One group actually had a reservation, so I told them it would be five minutes, and I ran over to clean a table quickly.
There were three other booths to be cleaned.
And I didn’t have time at the moment.
I ran over to the phone that had been ringing for the past ten minutes.
I answered a question about the menu and took down another group’s reservation for four.
By that time, almost five groups were waiting for checks.
I grabbed all those checks and walked them to the tables.
On the way, three people I knew from school stopped me to say hi.
And I couldn’t be rude.
Just when I could straighten my back and take a tiny gasp of air, someone would flag me down to ask where the bathroom was or ask for extra raita.
“Oh my god, you guys.” I shook my head vehemently and suppressed a curse when I walked into the kitchen for a few extra cups of raita. “We gotta be moving faster than this!”
The three cooks I employed had probably cooked on the Titanic and served breakfast to George Washington.
They were much older and much slower than the cooks at Fragrance, but they had one thing that my competitors never had: actual talent.
Fragrance used little charts pasted on their kitchen walls to cook.
Cooks there were young and lacked experience, so they looked at those charts to know how much chili powder to add or how long something needed to boil. It made the food impersonal and bland.
Our cooks added the flavor based on experience. If we made something in a bigger batch, they knew how to adjust the amount of salt without trying to do math and messing up. The food tasted so much better.
And I wasn’t just saying that because I owned the store, promise.
The chefs nodded and started stirring and sautéing faster. I grabbed the dishes that were done and ran back out to get them to their tables. After getting those dropped off, I ran over to the table next to me that I had seated a few minutes ago.
“Welcome to EJ’s; what can I get started for you today?”
My mind was already on the next thing while I was taking their orders. Two naans...a butter chicken—huh?
My pen stopped moving as I stopped writing the orders down in my little notebook and looked up.
I smiled and relaxed a little.
“I, um, don’t want anything,” Jahnvi muttered from the corner of the booth. She was sitting with the girls she sat with during lunch and looked like she would rather be absolutely anywhere but here.
“Aw, you sure?” I tilted my head. “Let me get you something on the house.”
“I’m not eating anything from your kitchen.”
“And yet, you’re still here.” I looked over her shoulder to see a big party come in. A young couple, a set of older people I guessed were their family, and the guy I saw last week were looking around at the full crowd. I saw him smile and I mentally punched the air.
This was going to be good.
“Ladies, I’ll get your orders soon. Jahnvi, I’ll get you a naan too.
” And before she could protest, I ran off to greet the most important guests of the night.
I’d actually sectioned off a table for them that I didn’t let anyone sit at all evening so they’d get a clean table immediately.
“Hello, hello! Good to see you again, sir, and good to meet everyone!” I nodded at them all with a big smile, really hoping they couldn’t tell how chaotic everything was.
“Wow, big crowd tonight?”
I grabbed seven menus and prompted them to follow me through the crowd. I looked back at who I guessed was the groom and spoke, “Yeah. We’re usually busy during dinner time.”
I heard a cough and looked up to see Jahnvi. The open table was right next to her booth, and she’d heard my blatant lie. In a frenzy, I set down the menus and cutlery so that they didn’t hear.
After I poured them some water, I looked up and glared at Jahnvi.
She was not going to mess up this night for me.
“And before you go,” the man planning the wedding that I had talked to last week said, “did you remember what I said about the flowers?”
I nodded. “Yes! I have a few sample wreaths set aside in the back. Once you’re done with your food, we can take a look and see if they work.”
While Jahnvi was busy snooping around my house, her grandma had shown me how to tie the flowers together properly to make a wreath. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as Jahnvi had made it out to be, but it was time-consuming.
So time-consuming.
I was up all night tying those flowers together for just a sample wreath.
The couple was just going to see if they liked my style of wreaths; that was all.
My plan was to end up selling the wreath so I wouldn’t lose all that money for nothing.
It might catch a good price. I was pretty proud of how it looked, not going to lie.
My thoughts were disrupted when I looked over at Jahnvi. I’d already set down their food and was cleaning another table when I saw her take the smallest bite possible out of the corner of the naan.
Now, what was her verdict?
Muttering a few bitter words to her friends, she ripped a bigger portion off her naan and dipped it into the butter chicken on her plate. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. There was no way I was ever going to let this go.
Finally, the moment I had awaited arrived. The guests slowly started leaving. I waved to a group of friends I knew from math and thanked someone else as they walked out the door. Taking a seat at the front desk, I let out a breath.
Well, that was insane.
But as usual, I didn’t get much of a break. The table with the couple and family waved me over for a check. I had kept an eye on their table all night and had made sure that the cooks had taken extra precautions with their food.
I put the check at the end of the table and the man planning the wedding looked up. “Outstanding job once again! The food was amazing. Just like last time.”
“Thank you, thank you,” I responded, taking a good look at everyone. They were, indeed, all smiling. I immediately felt a lot of stress lift from my shoulders, and I swear I could’ve flown at that moment.
But wait, Everett.
There was still the issue of the flowers. I’d had them refrigerated until an hour ago, when I put them in a little glass case my parents had left behind. I think it may have been used to display some kind of food or snacks.
I wasn’t talented enough yet to tie flowers in different patterns.
I just decided to tie different flowers together into different wreaths so that they were different colors.
The thing that set them apart was supposed to be the freshness of the flowers, not the design.
Hopefully, they didn’t think all the wreaths were too simple.
I could hear my heartbeat as I led them to the back of the store to the display. My heart leaped into my throat, and I could feel myself get all sweaty. The feeling didn’t get any better when the group clustered around my display, looking at the wreaths and talking to themselves in hushed tones.
They were so quiet that I couldn’t hear anything.
The bride was the one to look over at me first and my heart, at that moment, stopped entirely.
Please say yes, please say yes.
“You, sir,” she said, breaking out into a smile, “have some of the prettiest flowers I have ever seen.”